Another Intertel "Genius" Exposed As A Global Warming Denier Fool

Global warmin' just a ploy for socialists to take over!

In a recent essay appearing in 'Port of Call' (Intertel Region VII's NL) Jeffry R. Fisher  devoted considerable space to ideas for enhancing our nation's economic growth and efficiency.   For example, in one segment he proposed moving the current capital (in Washington, D.C.)  to "a more central location" - say "on the border between Nebraska and Colorado." This is his alternative "better solution", instead of giving the citizens of the District of Columbia two Senators and a House rep.  Besides, the new central location would then have:  "adequate highways, more interstate access, airport, commuter and distant rail locations".

Yeah, right,  Fisher's going to go for a more central geography at the expense of the very identity of the nation's capital.  Or....maybe down the line he will also propose moving the capital's historic landmarks, including Capitol Bldg., Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial etc. to the Nebraska - Colorado border?  Methinks just giving D.C. representation would be a far easier - and much more practical - solution!

Having read this nonsense one can imagine what his solution for better policy on global warming would be.  According to Fisher:  "We need to rethink the way we research 'Global Warming' (climate change)".   WHY?  The way we research it currently (thousands of peer-reviewed papers in professional journals)  is just fine and has brought us to a much better grasp of how the climate is changing. This is from Prof. Gunter Weller's work on the rapidly thawing Arctic, to the enhanced role of methane as the permafrost melts, to the acidification of the oceans  - and the increasing moisture content of the atmosphere. (See my previous post).

But this isn't good enough for Fisher because well, "there are so many political axes to grind, there's no way a collegial system of peer review can function correctly."  

Says WHO?   In fact, the existing system of peer review functions just fine for  dozens of professional journals and thousands of climate scientists - real ones, not paid hacks or frauds.  These journals  still dictate the highest professional standards and adherence to empirical data and consistent models, as opposed to wishful thinking and pseudo-scientific, quasi-political bull crap.

To Fisher and his suspicious cohort in the "HI-Q" societies - who fancy themselves critical thinkers and debunkers - peer review is all about giving global warming proponents a leg up over their contrarian colleagues. Of course this is total rubbish, and in fact shows a serious lack of critical thinking. Scientists - from fields as diverse as anthropology to astronomy  - like professionals in other fields (e.g. finance, economics, history etc.), actually compete for scarce resources.  They are not about to help a competitor - say with a competing model or theory - be published merely because they propose global warming models.  Thus, if anything,  peer review is likely to be even more brutal than for deniers.

What Fisher is really saying here is:

"There are so many political and economical axes to grind by my skeptic side that we can't get our stuff published in the current system!"

I concede Fisher has good reason to think or believe this given virtually no denier  papers are published in peer-reviewed professional climate science journals. They are generally dismissed precisely because they lack the basics of scientific authority - including: proper data selection, bias-free  analysis, consistent interpretation of data, and appropriate mathematical techniques. Hence, their papers are tagged as the opposite of  authoritative science.

Fisher's objection is really that  the peer review process poses too formidable an impediment for denier ("skeptic")  codswallop.  He instead wants any old trash to see publication to further bamboozle the masses who may never have taken a thermal physics course. By contrast, those without any ulterior political or economic agenda are willing to subject their research to rigorous peer review. They  don't cry and whine about "bias" or "propaganda" when a paper is rejected. They act like adults are supposed to and carefully go through the referee's criticisms and seek to correct the errors.

So what does this genius want to do instead? Well, he wants to ditch the peer review process entirely.  What does he want to replace it with?  Well, he wants to have basically two  teams go at it in an "adversarial system" - say like two teams of lawyers would in court.

The dope doesn't even grasp that such a stupid system is not based on scientific data or its merits at all, but subjective arguments. Still he claims the opposite,  as when he writes:

"Each side has a no-pretense partisan advocate backed up by staff doing research.  All sides meet periodically in a battle royal - preceded by a discovery phase in which each side published its claims, its methods, its data, its methods, its models' source code etc.  All sides cross examine each other's witnesses."

Can others also see why this is fulsome twaddle, and science - properly done- cannot be carried out like in a court room?    Why not? Well, because we base physical science (of which climate science is a sub-discipline) on existing well- accepted principles that best describe the objective phenomena under investigation,  as well as models that comport with those phenomena.  We also adopt the models and analytical methods that best reflect the principles.  This is not a matter for courtroom grandstanding, debate - even in "a battle royal."  There can be no "battle royal" if all parties agree on what the objective phenomena are and how they are measured from the outset. The problem is that the denier brigade doesn't agree because they know that to do so undermines their true premise: that it is the capitalist economy which trumps all.

What Fisher is really proposing is a kind of academic cage match as when he writes:

"At the end the battered sides retreat to their respective labs to lick their wounds, improve their models and methods and prep for the next meeting."

To what end? Just to go round and round with deniers and real scientists (weighted the same by Fisher's false equivalence)  going back and forth with no ultimate resolution?   Fisher likely can't even see this is the very essence of the agnotology that the denier side has been invoking since day one.  To refresh people's memories -  agnotology,- derived from the Greek 'agnosis', is a PR category to promote culturally constructed ignorance. It is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made.

It shouldn't take a near genius I.Q. to see the ideal way to achieve this is to set up a fictitious, straw man ("skeptic") side to oppose the genuinely scientific side - and have them go head to head in endless debates.   After all, there's just so much "uncertainty"!  How can you not go to the fabled adversarial model?  Let each side try the other's case and the one that does the best prosecution wins. (Interestingly there is no 'judge' to adjudicate the "battle royal".)  What could be wrong?  

Well, everything, because that's not how science works! Science progresses by incremental steps, which we call successive approximations. Basically then, each new datum is integrated into the existing model(s)  to enhance them in order to predict new data - which are then compared to what we actually observe. This has led us to the present understanding of our warming planet and that includes insights such as:  the current CO2 concentration is 403 ppm, every increase in CO2 concentration by 2 ppm increases the radiative heating effect by 2 W/ m^2, and, the planet's heat balance currently being out of kilter by  0.6 W/ m².

Opposed to this is Fisher's prescription for  adversarial agnosis but now in the guise of court room proceedings with each side engaged with the other in a series of "battle royals".  No, you can't make this stuff up.  (But neither could one make up the notion of moving the nation's capital to the Nebraska-Colorado border!)

Fisher's arguments in defense of this "adversarial"  system are even loopier, e.g.

"If my strategy is sound then each cycle of research and confrontation will force the sides to converge on something approaching "truth". In addition, all of us on the sidelines can gain confidence that what we eventually get is in fact the truth and not somebody's dogmatic propaganda."

But clearly the two sides can never ever "converge in something approaching truth" because genuine science can make no compromises with pseudo-science. We don't see Darwinian biologists allowing for theologic creation in certain species, any more than astronomers allow some planets - like Earth - to be flat and others spherical. It is total bollocks, so Fisher is wallowing in self-delusion.

 He then claims it's important we (e.g. in the US of A) do this because "the rest of the world is committed to climate alarm propaganda".  In other words they embrace at least some lowering of carbon emissions, as prescribed by the Paris Climate Treaty.

Which is total nonsense.

Of course, Fisher's adversarial strategy has already been shown not to work given his skeptic, actually pseudo -skeptic side- have been consistent losers. It is, after all, HIS side that has failed to get their papers published in respected journals because they have not met even minimal standards as I have described earlier.  For example, Willie Soon's bunkum, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-climate-scientist-fake-exposed.html

Ignoring clowns like Willie Soon, there are few others with whom Fisher can stack his pseudo-skeptic side, so why even waste the time? The matter for all intents has been settled whether Fisher and his clique of HI Q deniers like it or not  As noted by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman(Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, ,p. 24) :

“The debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

The problem, as we know, is that those like Fisher have no clue concerning the underlying physical principles - even basic thermal physics.  Hell, I defy Fisher or any one of his "climate alarm" conspiracy compadres to get even 50 % in this basic thermal physics test:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/12/thermal-physics-test-for-skeptics.html

To be sure, this denier lot hurl up science smokescreens because they are averse to embracing real climate science. This is because they are all about ideology!   We now know, thanks to the research of Yale prof Dan Kahan,  that "strategies" like the one espoused by Fisher are determined by deep-seated political values and cultural identities. Thus, a white libertarian member of  Intertel, for example, will see REAL global warming science  (as validated by peer review) as a dire threat against his precious conservative economic values and capitalist system.

This threat is then attributed to "global warming alarmism" which is tied to "dogmatic propaganda". Fisher proves my point that he'd never accept the real climate side anyway when he babbles at the end:

"So eliminate all funding for any and all orthodox view climate scare mongering and give all that money to iconoclasts and skeptics"

In other words, give it to the fraud side. Note before this he even acknowledges the need to stack his mock climate court, i.e. "even if the truth is close to the orthodox view" etc.  Yeah, even if the truth is close we will "eliminate any funding for the orthodox view".  (By which he really means the consensus view - since these climate change dolts....errrr....deniers,  are unable to accept there can be such agreement on real climate science and real climate change. Why not? Because they don't know anything!)

 In fact, according to Dan Kahan's theory, these high IQ skeptics don't really have the time (or inclination) to evaluate the global warming evidence that comes before them (say ice cores containing CO2) so they basically punt.  Instead of rationally and objectively evaluating the existing evidence they imbibe specious and spurious refuse  -generated by fakes like Willie Soon. They use their arguments to try to trash the climate science consensus - which they mislabel the "orthodox view" - that human induced warming is real, e.g.

http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf

At a deeper level, the pseudo skeptics like Fisher understand that stopping actual climate science is the highest priority for their warped economic system to prevail. Otherwise, it must be discarded for a system with emphasis on collective action and welfare. Nowhere has this been better articulated than by Naomi Klein in her recent book, 'NO Is Not Enough - Resisting Trump's Shock Politics'.   She writes (p. 81):

"Climate change, especially at this late date, can only be dealt with by collective action that sharply curtails the behavior of corporations such as ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. It demands investments in the public sphere - in new energy grids, public transit, light rail, and more energy efficiency....and that can only happen by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

In short, climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests."

I believe Fisher and his misguided ilk are smart enough to grasp that Naomi Klein has distilled their position to a tee. It is not about science so all this balderdash about pairing adversaries against each other - with opposing "data, methods, models, code"  etc. - is total bullshit.  It's bullshit because there is only ONE set of data, of models, etc. that matters.  The other side's is as phony as a 3 dollar bill, and I suspect Fisher already knows that.

In effect, Fisher's lot grasps that the issue really is about "detonating the ideological scaffolding" of modern day economic conservatism to which they are committed and they can't have it. They can't tolerate it.  Fair enough, then at least be honest!  Drop the pseudo-scientific baloney and admit once and for all that this is about protecting the capitalist economic system. Then, instead of wasting their time and ours by creating fabulist versions of climate science,  talk straight about the real concerns, and how we might work together to ameliorate them. 

But don't hold your breath.

Let's Admit It: If You Succumb To "Fake News" You're A Dummy

We are, to put it bluntly, immersed in an information cornucopia. There is simply no excuse for anyone of normal intelligence to get things wrong or be misled. Hence, the reports of "fake news" posted at Facebook taking gullible people in is beyond belief.  Anyone with a grain of sense knows that news outside authorized sources, like Facebook posts, has to be cross-checked. If a person then is still taken in, as in one FB post during the election campaign that "Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump" then that person must be a dummy.

Reinforcing this was Froma Harrop's recent astounding findings - appearing in her Nov. 20 Denver Post column('I'm Leaving Facebook, Won't You Follow Me?'), that nearly all the Facebook fake news items were generated outside the U.S. and often by kids - playing the American public. She wrote:

"Kids in a town in Macedonia (that’s near Greece) created over 100 pro-Trump websites, spreading phony reports such as FBI plans to indict Hillary Clinton. The Make America Great page outsources the writing of fraudulent news to a couple in the Philippines."


Did they know something most pollsters don't? Yeppers, that too many Americans are dumb as rocks and don't check their facts, or dismiss them as incredible.

Harrop adds:

"Compounding the evil, Facebook’s design makes fake stories from fake sites such as the nonexistent Denver Guardian look like stories from the very real Denver Post. And no, blocking fake news sites from ad revenues is not going to stop politically motivated lying.Facebook further degrades the national conversation by creating echo chambers. Its algorithm directs the “news” people like to their like-minded friends."

With travesties like this no surprise the Oxford Dictionary's choice of post- truth as 2016's "word of the year". It defines post -truth as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping pubic opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief"


 Stanford's  Robert N.  Proctor recently asked (NY Times, 'Climate Change In Trump's Age Of Ignorance'):

"People like to think of us as living in an age of information, but a better descriptor might be “the age of ignorance.”

How did we get into this predicament? Why are we about to inaugurate the most anti-science administration in American history?"

I noted in an earlier post that deniers and believers in codswallop merit no tolerance, because in this age of Google and abundant knowledge it's inexcusable not to have the right material at your hands, if you make even a modest effort. But denialists especially aren't so invested, as Proctor pinpoints the key issue:

"We now live in a world where ignorance of a very dangerous sort is being deliberately manufactured, to protect certain kinds of unfettered corporate enterprise. The global climate catastrophe gets short shrift, largely because powerful fossil fuel producers still have enormous political clout, following decades-long campaigns to sow doubt about whether anthropogenic emissions are really causing planetary warming. Trust in science suffers, but also trust in government. And that is not an accident. Climate deniers are not so much anti-science as anti-regulation and anti-government."

Auden Schendler writing in the Sunday Denver Post exposes one major consequence of Trump's minority election:

"Trump’s election almost certainly dooms us to warming beyond the 2 degrees Celsius threshold identified by scientists, because many of the rules put into place by President Barack Obama — the Clean Power Plan, the Paris treaty, even mileage standards on cars — can be undermined by a new president. Beyond two degrees, feedback loops like forest die-off, ice-melt and methane-release take us to an ever warmer world"

This is something I've complained about before in terms of the pernicious mind virus inherent in agnotology, the deliberate cultivation of skepticism for economic, political ends.. But it goes beyond that in the willingness of too many of our fellow citizens to treat information and actual, verifiable knowledge like food choices in a cafeteria - where you just pick what you want and it's all relative to one's preferences.. No it is not.

The libertarian climate denier who disavows the data from ice core analysis and satellite sea ice mappings does himself no favors. Worse, if he invests his gray matter into beliefs that there is a "global warming alarmist conspiracy" and controversial scientific papers are deliberately excluded from publication..

As I noted before, most of these "skeptics" are really pseudo-skeptics: they adopt the venerable verbal mantle of skeptic but in fact do so in an unfounded, unaccountable way. They actually possess the necessary intellect to ferret out the truth and DO the research but are too damned lazy to do it. They don't want to read 15 or 20 papers that thoroughly debunk their idiotic beliefs, they'd rather just go to climate denier websites, imbibe the misinformation and repeat it. Especially with the conspiracy aspect.

One of the best exposes of their methods and dynamics has come from Yale Law school prof and science communication researcher Dan Kahan.  He has concluded that their information processing is almost entirely determined by their deep-seated political values and cultural identities. Thus, a white libertarian member of  Intertel, for example, will see global warming science as just one more vehicle of  subversive force backed  by the "untermenschen"  to be used against his precious economic values and Eurocentric ideals. All of this is then attributed to "global warming alarmism", as an expeditious cover for his own abysmal laziness, ignorance and cynicism. At this point, his thinking is already so corrupted and contaminated it's almost impossible to break through on any rational or critical thinking level.

At the other end of the post-truth spectrum are those who can't even be bothered to invoke rationalizations, they simply believe whatever nonsense is expelled from a moron's mouth. Especially a moron full of himself with pretensions to national leadership like Donald Trump. Hence, Atlantic columnist David Frum's reference to Trump's dishonesty as "qualitatively different than anything before seen in a major party nominee".

Such as saying Mexicans coming to the States were "rapists", Ted Cruz' dad was involved in the Kennedy assassination and climate change was a "hoax invented by the Chinese."  (See my next post, however, as Trump appears to have changed his position on this).

But what has gotten the attention of those like Frum, David Brooks, and others is that none of his idiotic spoutings mattered to those who supported him. It was as if truth was dead, all facts passe. If the Trumpster said it, especially with gusto, it has to be true. As my German sister-in-law put it, the only example she ever recalled that came close was Adolf Hitler.. He could repeat a lie often and via about ten different versions, getting the masses to believe each merely by the passion injected.

But it goes beyond passion, also involving the medium used, and in Trump's case, Twitter. Or what I refer to as a "mini medium" allowing for only 140 characters and hence an absolute minimum of complex thought. One is basically reduced to the equivalent of a series of language cartoons.  This also harkens back to the medium used  constituting the basis of the message, as Marshall McLuhan first pointed out in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. 

If then Twitter is essentially a cartoon language medium it will be most deftly exploited by a cartoon persona, which is precisely what Trump is when you dissect him: Bigger than life, believes he can actually be a President and billionaire businessman simultaneously (he can't) and capable of spouting any nonsense that erupts within his synapses realizing a lot of receptive brains will simply imbibe it in unthinking fashion. Those brains themselves the equivalent of cartoons if they receive his tweeting expulsions  and absorb them uncritically. So, little wonder there is no parsing of the messages or analytical processing. Tweets do not lend themselves to any critical processing.  Hence, there is much greater probability of taking them literally.

A big question that arises now is whether Trump will continue his tweeting as President. There is a good case to be made that this would be akin to hiring a 12 year old as his speech writer. Bottom line is we expect more gravitas in our Presidents and the office itself - if one is going to insist on ""respect" - demands a certain level of decorum. This simply can't be achieved by tweets, unless one is willing to be viewed as an unreconstructed adolescent. So, like it or not, Trump- if he wishes to be taken seriously by those beyond his cartoon tweet and re-tweet community - will have to put on his big boy pants and put the Twitter away. Better yet, give his phone to Melania for safe keeping.

That will be a good thing because it will open him up to the potential for really, finally addressing his millions of daffy supporters in a serious way. Also, using media less likely to be hijacked by 14 year olds in Macedonia to create fake news posts on Facebook.

At least one can hope!

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/neal-gabler/70096/who-s-really-to-blame-for-fake-news-look-in-the-mirror-america

Excerpt:

"Fake news thrives because there is a lazy, incurious, self-satisfied public that wants it to thrive; because large swaths of that public don’t want news in any traditional sense,. So much as they want vindication of their preconceptions and prejudices; because in this post-modernist age, every alleged fact is supposed to be a politico-economic construct, and nothing can possibly be true; and because even rationality now is passé. Above all else, fake news is a lazy person’s news. It provides passive entertainment, demanding nothing of us. And that is a major reason we now have a fake news president."

We Shouldn't Dismiss People Who Deny Facts? Why The Hell NOT?

                                                         "I duz  not like facks! DOH!"

A recent irritating, short essay in TIME (Sept. 12-19, p. 26) insisted rational and fact-based people need to give all the zombies,  knuckle draggers, and ignorant buffoons among us a 'break' and not dismiss them.  So, for example, we must give a pass to those who "believe things that are factually incorrect". Say like those who believe that vaccines cause autism, or to one innominate,  self-proclaimed genius of Intertel who is 100 percent convinced that "scientific conspirators falsified their data on which they based their alarming findings."  Or -from the same genius: "these scientists manipulated the peer review process to keep valid research against global warming from being published."

But anyone who's  been involved in serious climate science research would know the latter two beliefs are pure balderdash and definitely merit no respect. Especially if they issue from people who are members of a high IQ group.  They ought to have known or found out that denier papers are rejected because they don't meet minimum publication standards, including: use of proper mathematical or statistical techniques to assess data, use of coherent and testable physical models and/or simulations and assessment of errors in each of the preceding. But it's easier for deniers simply to believe denier research papers are left out because the review process is "manipulated."

While ordinary people may be partly excused for their beliefs, a high IQ person cannot be similarly excused, and he or she merits the full hammer of criticism and opprobrium. He has effectively misused his high intelligence to 'go off the rails'  and not conducted sufficient self-checks on his claims. Nor used his intelligence - with sufficient energy - to do his own research to first seek to disprove his many superficially -based beliefs.

Why? Because by virtue of their very intelligence they ought to fucking know better!  They actually possess the necessary intellect to ferret out the truth and DO the research but are too god damned lazy to do it. They don't want to read 15 or 20 papers that thoroughly debunk their idiotic beliefs, they'd rather just go to climate denier websites, imbibe the misinformation and repeat it. Especially with the conspiracy aspect.

The authors of the TIME essay ('We Shouldn't Dismiss People Who Deny Facts') claim:

"If we really want to change how they think, we need to take an honest look at what's driving those beliefs. Because it's not ignorance, it's psychology."

Actually, in the case of the genius climate deniers (or their  soft soaping allies who aren't as denial -based but still think "the jury is out")  it's politics that's to blame. Specifically Libertarianism,  which most of them espouse, whether in Mensa or Intertel.  This leads them to collect — even invent — bad information to flesh out what they already believe to justify their economics theories.  Their aim isn't scientific pursuit but rather defending an economic system they believe will unravel if practical solutions to global warming became law.

My point? Their  interjection and invocation of politics means they can no longer be afforded special consideration, and this distinguishes them from say, the vaccine skeptics. The TIME authors, Sara and Jack Gorman, claim we are all subject to the same principles that "cause scientific denial".  They add:

"Research has shown that humans are distinctly uncomfortable with events or phenomena without clear causes - and when we don't  know something we tend to fill in the gaps ourselves. Take autism. Since we don't know why it occurs it becomes easy to misplace blame."

Fair enough, but autism is not global warming, for which we KNOW the cause is ever increasing CO2 concentrations that cause the atmosphere to retain more moisture and heat creating a thermal blanket that heats the Earth like a mammoth greenhouse. Indeed, the source of the greenhouse effect has been known for nearly 120 years, from the time of chemist Svante Arrhenius, e.g.

http://warming.sdsu.edu/

This issue also transpired in the debate Monday night when Trump tried to deny he had earlier called global warming a "hoax".  This, despite the fact an old tweet of his was dug up where in he babbled:
"the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese."

Why recite such crap? Because it served a political advantage. But sorry, you don't get any breaks nor are you spared criticism when you go that route. The same applies to Libertarians in Mensa and Intertel who have banged the denier drum until they're blue in the face. They do it precisely because they don't wish to acknowledge that - if true (which it is) - economic sacrifices will have to be made in the short and long term interest of future generations.  The upshot of their unquestioning belief in market economics leads them to craft a pseudo-scientific narrative ( in the guise of real science) to attack genuine climate science. To accomplish this trick they make use of  the data, papers of proven scientific whores and hacks, willing to sell their dubious skills for a few shekels to the highest capitalist bidders or think tanks e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-climate-scientist-fake-exposed.html

One of the best exposes of their methods and dynamics has come from Yale Law school prof and science communication researcher Dan Kahan.  He has concluded that their information processing is almost entirely determined by their deep-seated political values and cultural identities. Thus, a white libertarian member of  Intertel, for example, will see global warming science as just one more vehicle of  subversive force backed  by the "untermenschen"  to be used against his precious economic values and Eurocentric ideals. All of this is then attributed to "global warming alarmism", as an expeditious cover for his own abysmal laziness, ignorance and cynicism. At this point, his thinking is already so corrupted and contaminated it's almost impossible to break through on any rational or critical thinking level.

From Kahan's theory, these pseudo skeptics don't really have the time to evaluate every piece of evidence that comes before them (say ice cores containing CO2) so basically punt. Instead of rationally and objectively evaluating the evidence they side with the top bananas in their political group  - in this case folks like Charles Murray- and use their generic  economic arguments (i.e. against taxes as "theft" and "force")  to attack climate science or more precisely the climate science consensus that human induced warming is real, e.g.

http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf

One of their most used shticks is to clump all federal science agencies (like NOAA, NASA, EPA  etc.) together and "in on the scam". This makes it easy so they don't have to use their brains or  time plowing through separate specialist climate papers. Why do that when you can kill five birds with one stone?

Driven by this short cut mental modality, they then seek out those oddball contrarians (like Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Richard Lindzen) who do sound off against the climate consensus, even though they are dead wrong and have been proven so.  The stage then emerges for the next phase: cherry picking only the data which conforms to their economic or political values. By now we have  a self-reinforcing mechanism: the more the Libbie genius gets exposed to the faux science that  supports his economic and political stance the more he continues to adopt that position and related ones further out. These include such far out, paranoid ideations that one's opponents "demand that Western Industrial Civilization commit cultural suicide by adopting the crippling constraints sought by the global warming conspirators."  in the words of Kort Patterson.

Meanwhile, by extension, misinformation in public life isn’t the exception, it’s the rule, according to a study published in Social Science Quarterly  which employed a “knowledge distortion index” and looked at two competing explanations for why this is so — one top-down, the other bottom-up.  The researchers used three Washington state initiatives from the 2006 general election cycle to examine the dynamics of what is going on in this particular sort of political environment.  The study, “How Voters Become Misinformed: An Investigation of the Emergence and Consequences of False Factual Beliefs,” found that “voters’ values and partisanship had the strongest associations with distorted beliefs, which then influenced voting choices. Self-reported levels of exposure to media and campaign messages "played a surprisingly limited role,” despite the presence of significantly mistaken “facts,” which were used to help construct the knowledge distortion index.
 

Lead author, Justin Reedy in one interview stated “Both of these theories recognize that citizens can develop distorted factual beliefs because of their political views, but they disagree about how those distortions might happen. Heuristics researchers generally think that citizens have limited attention for politics and try to process information quickly and efficiently.”

Again, this reverts to Kahan's theory of why intelligent climate deniers give short shrift to deep research that might change their minds - if they only got off their butts and put their high IQs to use for an activity other than denial. But because simple denial consumes less time (one can get denier "misinformation" quickly and efficiently from numerous websites) then their denier behavior is more likely to be reinforced. That means they will be less likely to expend time or effort on difficult independent  research that might change their mind.
 
The Gormans assert Iibid.):

"Rather than chastising people for focusing so heavily on stories, we should figure out why we are all so drawn to stories in the first place. Changing minds requires compassion and understanding, not disdain."

A sentiment with which I wholeheartedly concur. And that's why I often make allowances for those like the anti-vaxxers because they aren't privy to detailed biological science nor are they likely to understand autism if they did access research. So they must confabulate "stories" and these often support their false beliefs. However, I am not about to extend the same generosity to a Mensan or Ilian - especially one who cynically uses his intelligence to spread misinformation and misbegotten conspiracy theories about "global warming alarmists".

The Intelligent Irrationalists: Why So Many High IQ Folks Deny Sound Science

A recurring problem for discussion in many professional scientific organizations is how to get out ahead of pseudo-science and in particular denial science: the denial of scientific legitimacy (or mocking it with facetious putdowns). The classic example is for human-induced global warming and what most concerns many climate scientists is a specific subset of intellectual critic referred to as "intelligent irrationalists".

These people, often in high IQ societies like Mensa and Intertel,,  fancy themselves "debunkers" but fail to perceive they are, in fact, sophisticated "bunkers" : the disseminators of bunkum and rubbish thanks to their own intellectual blind spots (especially in the critical thinking capacity) and also their irrationality.

What has often irritated and puzzled me - not necessarily in that order- is how so many of these denizens feel so confident to spout off at length about topics like global warming - despite the fact they've likely had the most passing acquaintance with thermal physics. The thread I have seen through all their assorted critiques - say like Intertel's Kort Patterson - is they lean almost entirely to Libertarianism or some entrenched and unquestioning belief in market economics. The upshot is that their adulation of the latter leads them to craft a counter narrative in the guise of real science (but more analogous to creationist "science") to attack genuine climate science.

There may be some psychological and sociological ballast to this. We've already seen, for example, the thesis of Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor who correctly ties global warming denial to the trend of pseudo-skepticism sown deliberately and for political or economic ends . In other words, the agents of agnotology - whoever they may be- are all committed to one end: extolling economic profit over human habitability of planet Earth.  Some disgusted climate scientists have even referred to this breed of economically dominated denizens as "Homo Economicus" to distinguish it from Homo Sapiens.

But a another side to this has been articulated by Yale Law school prof and science communication researcher Dan Kahan.  He has concluded that most information processing - especially by the intelligent irrationalists -is determined by their own deep-seated political values and cultural identities. Thus, a white libertarian member of  Intertel, for example, will see global warming science as just one more vehicle of  subversive force backed  by the "untermenschen"  to be used against his precious economic values and Eurocentric ideals. All of this then attributed to "global warming alarmism". At this point, his thinking is already so corrupted and contaminated it's almost impossible to break through on any rational or critical thinking level.

In general, according to Kahan's theory, these high IQ skeptics - or who fancy themselves such, don't really have the time to evaluate every piece of evidence that comes before them (say ice cores containing CO2) so basically punt. Instead of rationally and objectively evaluating the evidence they side with the top bananas in their political group  - in this case folks like Charles Murray- and use their generic  economic arguments (i.e. against taxes as "theft" and "force")  to attack climate science or more precisely the climate science consensus that human induced warming is real, e.g.

http://sciencepolicy.agu.org/files/2013/07/AGU-Climate-Change-Position-Statement_August-2013.pdf

Driven by this short cut mental modality, they then seek out those oddball contrarians (like Willie Soon) who do sound off against the climate consensus, even though they are dead wrong, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/another-climate-scientist-fake-exposed.html

Thus, the stage emerges for the next phase: cherry picking only the data which conforms to the economic or political values of one's identity group, in this case, libertarianism. It is also by now become a self-reinforcing mechanism: the more one gets exposed to the faux science that  supports one's economic and political stance the more one continues to adopt that position and related ones further out. These include far out, paranoid ideations that one's opponents "demand that Western Industrial Civilization commit cultural suicide by adopting the crippling constraints sought by the global warming conspirators."  in the words of Kort Patterson.

In other words it's not that much of a jump from the irrational rationalizations underpinning one's position based on a group identity, to conjuring conspiracy theories targeting the out groups (real scientists and citizens - government officials who support them)

Related to the cherry picking of data, there is also the noisome tactic of mischaracterizing research methods and results, for example mocking the 'hockey stick" ansatz of Michael Mann.  In the words of one Intertel AGW denier Carol Dane:

"One hundred and twenty eminent scientists here, some Nobel laureates with impressive credentials, denounce Michael Mann and his hockey stick chart on which so much fraudulent global warming argument is based."

No mention that the bulk of those "eminent scientists" were economists, former NASA engineers, chemists, geologists, biologists and psychologists. Also that a number of climatologists  subsequently published their own reconstructions of global temperatures from independent lines of research that vindicated Mann's research by showing similar if not identical trends in temperature..

But again, this is the nature of the criticism from the intelligent irrationalists, who also comfort themselves (as members of Intertel, say) that few mortals will be able to take them on and dismantle their nonsense.

Another key attribute of their irrationality which especially stands out in Kort Patterson's tirades against AGW is focusing on perceived implications rather than examining the evidence itself. Thus Patterson leaps to the hysterical implication that climate scientists who've published in support of anthropogenic warming "demand that Western Industrial Civilization commit cultural suicide ".

In its irrational extremism it is really not much different from an anti-evolutionist who might assert: "well, if evolution is true and we all descended from a common primate ancestor we could as well kill ourselves because we don't have souls and life has no purpose".

Again, an unhinged,  hysterical implication. (Though I am sure Kort would disagree with the comparison)

Another  recurring irrational tactic of the economic obsessives in the high IQ societies is to make personal attacks on the scientists themselves, or their methods - say like Michael Mann and his hockey stick.  Thus, instead of focusing on the science (which admittedly most of these people are weak in) they claim the scientists have "rigged'" or "fudged" their research or data to support a scientific consensus. All it takes by this time is the slightest news or hint of subterfuge (say like the overblown climate gate brouhaha) to establish a specious confirmation bias and make them believe it's true and there really is a global conspiracy.

The most depressing aspect, as Kahan observes, is there may be little that can be done by the genuine rationalist or scientist to convince these intelligent irrationalists of their folly. That may have to await the extreme unfolding of multifold climatic disasters in real time, in whatever form - e.g.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1108763899


to finally turn this lot into believers or at least accepting the plausibility of the premise.. Even then they are just as likely to write off the effects, i.e. "That  51-day  heat wave leading to monster fires was just a meteorological disturbance".

As Kahan and others observe, all this discloses humans are hard-wired for irrational thinking. Science in its legitimate practice can certainly help to abate such tendencies but if the afflicted persons distrust even science (as "rigged") , there is little that can be done. That critique also applies to the superficial, frivolous lot of 'so what?' skeptics such as Intertel's Steve Mason - unprepared to invest mental capital in anything.. Hence, willing to believe anything even codswallop from the likes of Kort Patterson.

In the end the lack of any discrimination in the latter may pave the way for even more expressions of irrationality, based on "why accept anything when science is always changing" or to use Mason's words: "How can I believe anything when what I believe changes?"  

Those like Mason  are probably convinced they are the ultimate "rational"  AGW critics  using a meta-template to ascribe any risks of  climate change  as "inflated". But in the end they are just as irrational as the outright irrationalists - only adopting a less discernible cover to the superficial observer. But for those of us who've been fighting this lot for over 40 years in different forums, they aren't fooling anyone - at least not us!

Partisanship and the Brain: Why We Can't Get the Righties to Accept Global Warming or Evolution

Yale professor Dan Kahan's research discloses that a graph of C-14 excess over C-12 over a 2,000 year period such as shown, would be next to useless - if shown to a political partisan. The quantitative basis would be obscured behind the need to preserve one's personal beliefs and biases.


For many years I've pondered why it's so difficult to get through the brains of hardliners on the Right, say to convince them of the validity of  global warming, Darwinian evolution or even the need for raising taxes in a low aggregate demand economic environment. Over years of honing the most comprehensive, fact-based arguments nothing seems to have sunken in, and the other side - for whatever reason- never appears to grasp or accept them.

Now, however, it appears an answer may be at hand. We may now finally know why it is that arguments, no matter how logically crafted or fact-based, are always doomed to fail if the brain of the other person is inherently biased and partisan.   One needs then to examine Yale law school professor Dan Kahan’s new research paper  “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,”. (For those less inclined to technical takes Chris Mooney’s piece about it,  “Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math”, is perhaps a better option.)

What Kahan  did is to conduct ingenious experiments concerning the impact of political passion to affect people’s ability to think clearly.  His conclusion:  partisanship “can even undermine our very basic reasoning skills…. [People] who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs.”

Thus, when we provide evidence or the numbers, showing that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is now at nearly 450 ppm and it's increasing at the rate of 2 ppm per year, and that the solar insolation is increasing at the rate of 2 watts per square meter per year, it means absolutely nothing to the politically- contaminated brain. The numbers won't be processed, the rate of increase - relative to the critical tipping point  (550 ppm) for the runaway greenhouse - won't be appreciated. The same applies to any quantitative data shown in graphical form, such as the one for the isotope C14 excess over C12 shown at the top of this post.


In other words, we can say 'goodnight'  to the dream that education, journalism, scientific evidence, media literacy or reason can provide the tools and information that people need in order to make good decisions.  Not even graduate degrees, it appears, can make a difference in perception or insight if the person is a confirmed partisan. Global warming will remain a "hoax" even if he avails himself of the excellent Yale course on global atmospheric dynamics, e.g.
http://oyc.yale.edu/geology-and-geophysics/gg-140

The  lack of information then isn’t the real problem.  The impasse resides in how our brains work, no matter how smart we think we are.  Just like the OAA or orientation and activation area of the brain, pre-disposes it to God talk and special beliefs - i.e. that a person is one-on-one with the deity- other brain regions (e.g. temporal lobes, optical chasm) impede rational processing of data, information.

Sure, all humans want to believe they’re rational, but Kahan's work shows that in reality most people employ their reason  ex post facto to  rationalize what they already want to believe. Thus, if they already believe global warming is a "hoax" their brains won't work in order to process new information that invalidates that, but rather they will search for bogus information (say from a Terry Lovell, or Richard Lindzen, or Jason Lisle) that reinforces their misperceptions. So in fact, they are prepared to waste their brainpower to protect their political belief systems.

Do facts matter at all anymore, what with Neoliberal PR dominating and the artificial manufacturing of consent pushed by it all over the Zeitgeist? The answer, basically, is no.  When people are misinformed, giving them facts to correct those errors only makes them cling to their beliefs more tenaciously, because their engines of rejection will work ever harder by rationalization to protect them. This includes citing bogus sources - such as FAUX News- to assert their beliefs have merit.

Kahan, meanwhile, gives excellent examples in his work of how the brains of partisans set up barriers to correct their own beliefs:

- People who thought WMDs were found in Iraq believed that misinformation even more strongly when they were shown a news story correcting it. In most cases, they asserted the source (e.g. MSNBC) was wrong, and their source (FOX, Rush Limbaugh)  correct.

-People who said the economy was the most important issue to them, and who disapproved of Obama’s economic record, were shown a graph of nonfarm employment over the prior year – a rising line, adding about a million jobs.  They were asked whether the number of people with jobs had gone up, down .

-If, before they were shown the graph, they were asked to write a few sentences about an experience that made them feel good about themselves, a significant number of them changed their minds about the economy.

Kahan's bleakest finding was that the more advanced that people’s math skills, the more likely it was that their political views, whether liberal or conservative, made them less able to solve the math problem.  This is interesting in itself, and once again, shows me that without critical thinking skills both sides are liable to go astray. Thus, we see  liberals  more and more supporting Obama blindly,  asserting "Good American exceptionalism" and "Obama right or wrong" even as he was castigating Edward Snowden as "no patriot" or banging the drums for war with Syria. Meanwhile, we see many conservatives blindly following the Tea Party like lemmings, even as they may lead them (and all of us) over the cliff with the debt ceiling impasse.

If only our brains were more evolved these problems might be solved. But without serious external intervention, this is all but impossible. The alternative being having to wait another million years for the biological evolution of the brain to occur.